Chocolate processing and production involves a varied set of techniques and apparatus, often highly dependent on the end-user and the desired final chocolate product. Historically, chocolate processing and production has been the purview of large-scale industrial producers or individuals working with disparate tools and inconsistent methods. Several types of processing that are commonly involved in the production of chocolate include: grinding, refining, mixing, conching, tempering, extracting, molding, cooling, heating, and other processing steps and/or techniques. Smaller, specialized equipment and techniques have recently been developed to bring chocolate processing technology to individual users and small businesses; however, such systems and methods suffer from a number of drawbacks. In particular, many systems are overly specialized (e.g., perform only a single step of processing, can accomplish a limited number of the full set of processing steps, etc.), result in inconsistent or undesirable chocolate product (e.g., produce highly polycrystalline forms of chocolate, fat-blooms on the chocolate surface, etc.), require highly specialized or technical knowledge to operate (e.g., systems that lack a simplified user interface), and are excessively costly for an individual user to own and operate (e.g., industrially scalable systems).
Furthermore, construction of fully integrated automatable chocolate processing systems that are accessible to a variety of end-users (e.g., industrial producers, small business producers, hobbyists, etc.) at a reasonable cost is particularly challenging. Challenges include: performing the various steps of the production process (e.g., grinding, refining, conching, tempering, extracting, molding, etc.) within the same system; keeping such a capable system within a small form factor (e.g., tabletop, benchtop, etc.); controlling the operating parameters of the system so as to achieve repeatable chocolate production between batches (e.g., similar consistencies, flavors, etc.); controlling the temporal profile of important characteristics (e.g., temperature) of the chocolate during production; cleaning the system in between production batches; and automating the entire processing and production procedure.
There is thus a need in the chocolate production field to create a new and useful automated chocolate processing system and method of processing chocolate. This invention provides such a new and useful system and method.